


Stake Out

by EntreNous



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Humor, M/M, Roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-02-12
Updated: 2007-02-12
Packaged: 2017-12-13 03:53:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/819675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EntreNous/pseuds/EntreNous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gunn and Xander go on a stake out, like two totally normal guys who live with each other and spend all their time together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stake Out

**Author's Note:**

> Another [maleslashminis](http://maleslashminis.livejournal.com/) fic.

“I don’t see why we couldn’t have taken my car,” Xander muttered as he took a swallow of his mocha frappuccino. “At least it’s air-conditioned.”

“Because your car is a 2001 minivan,” Gunn answered. He kept his eyes on the house they were staking out and sipped at his hot coffee. “That’s striking fear into nobody’s heart.”

Xander pointedly fanned himself with a take-out taco menu. “You know, I’m not so much about the fear striking as about aggressive air conditioning. It’s ten o’clock at night, and it feels like high noon in here. Can’t you turn on the vent or something?”

“No go on the vent. We don’t want anyone to spot us, so the engine stays off.” Gunn glanced at Xander, and then returned his gaze to the darkened street.

Xander looked around the cab and snorted. “Hey, I think I figured out why this thing traps heat like crazy. It’s too damn small.” He sighed. “My ride, on the other hand, can’t be beat for space and maximum portability.”

“My truck carries everything I need,” Gunn replied.

“Carries whatever you need . . . try fitting eight Slayers into the cab sometime, and then we’ll talk,” Xander said. He slurped the last of his drink noisily, and then looked around for a place to put it. “You know . . . the minivan has four cup holders.”

“Because cup holders are really what you need in a covert operation.” Gunn rubbed at his face.

Xander grumbled something under his breath and slunk down in his seat.

A compact car slowed as it passed them, and Gunn sat up. But then the vehicle kept on moving. “I don’t need to fit lots of people in this cab, especially since none of the Slayers in town are past training stage.”

“Yeah, you’d have thought we’d have timed that better, what with shipping the ones that were battle-ready off to new posts. But Buffy thought we needed them other places.” Xander stretched and yawned. “Not that I mind getting in some patrolling and good old fashioned apocalypse-interrupting every now and again, but I’m getting kind of attached to catching the late night talk shows lately.”

“Anyway, Slayer-wrangling, that’s your job,” Gunn added as an afterthought.

“Could be yours too,” Xander offered. “If you wanted. Not like I’m about to kick you off my couch anytime soon, especially since you make killer pancakes.”

Gunn looked out the window, though there was no movement on the street. “I can’t if I’m headed back to L.A. to meet up with Angel and Spike soon. It’s been fun and all, but you know I’m just in town until they get back from whatever hell dimension they’re negotiating in.”

“You didn’t want to go to the hell dimension, huh?” Xander asked.

“Kind of had my fill of those,” Gunn said.

“What are they like?” Xander asked. He looked down at his plastic cup, poking at it with his straw.

“Well, everyone has lots of air conditioning and all the cup holders they want,” Gunn shot back.

Xander sputtered. “You’re just biased against suburbia.”

“You would be too, you been where I’d been. But you know, I don’t get how you’re not.” Gunn shook his head. “You ride around Africa in a jeep for two years, spend another trekking around Europe, and now you’re back to being track housing boy at Midwestern Slayer Central.” He pointed at Xander. “You in serious need of some cool.”

Xander put his hand over his heart. “Hey! I completely got over worrying whether people thought I was cool or not after I graduated high school.”

“Well, there you go. Who cares what I think? You’re doing your own thing,” Gunn answered. He tipped his paper cup back, drinking the last of his coffee.

Xander tapped his fingers along the dash. “So you’re saying that you don’t think I’m cool.”

“You’ve got Weird Al’s ‘White and Nerdy’ for your cell’s ring tone,” Gunn answered. “And I’m thinking you’re not getting the irony there.”

“No way is that a fair point,” Xander protested. “Dawn downloaded that and put it on there when I wasn’t looking.”

“Yeah? Well, how come you haven’t changed it?”

“I’ll have you know that it’s because I can’t figure out how,” Xander said in an indignant voice.

Gunn laughed. “Least it’s better than Patsy Cline.”

“I don’t think the guy who had ‘Three Little Maids from School’ on his mp3 player the last time I checked is in any position to be making fun of my music choices,” Xander noted.

“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with a little Gilbert and Sullivan,” Gunn returned.

Just then Xander’s shirt pocket roared out: _They see me mowing/my front lawn/I know they’re all thinkin’/I’m so white and nerdy_.

“You can’t turn that down, bro?” Gunn hissed as Xander fumbled with the phone.

“Willow, hi,” Xander answered, half-turning towards the door. “They’re about to work the mojo? Oh, he is? Got it, thanks.”

“So he’s not inside,” Gunn said as Xander snapped the phone shut.

“On his way back,” Xander confirmed.

Two minutes later, a guy pulled up in a jeep, and cast a quick glance around before loping up the lawn to the house. He held a parcel in his arms, clutched to him like a baby.

No lights went on, but there was movement, just barely visible, in a room at the back of the house.

They exchanged a glance, and then after waiting a moment, ran straight for the back entrance.

Three vampires stood guard on the rickety porch, one of them digging through a box of Cheez-its, another leaning against the aluminum siding and yawning, and the third exclaiming, “I’m just _saying_ , if New Line doesn’t want to lose the entire fan base, they’re going to have to treat Peter Jackson with respect!”

“Aw, nuts,” the Cheez-it vamp burst out as he saw Gunn and Xander run up with stakes in their hands.

The first two were dust before they turned all the way around, and the third ran about twenty paces into the neighbor’s yard before Gunn caught up with him.

“You good?” Xander asked in a low voice when Gunn jogged up the back steps, side-stepping a missing plank of wood.

“Let’s do it. Count of three.”

Xander gave him a jerky nod.

When Gunn kicked the door in, they found four vampires inside chanting and kneeling in a circle. A pentagram had been dribbled onto the wood-paneled floor. At the center was a pile of three or four hearts -- human, and from the looks of them, fresh.

Then man who had run inside stepped out of the shadows, wearing a long robe and holding a glowing orb in his extended hand. He bellowed, “Who are you who dare to interrupt the sacred rite of --”

“You care which rite we’re interrupting?” Xander asked Gunn.

“Hell, no,” Gunn replied.

“Insolent humans,” the leader growled as he advanced. “I am Barfour, and my name is as a curse to you!”

Xander rushed up and knocked the glass object out of Barfour’s hand, sending it crashing to the floor. When it shattered, everyone in the room reeled back, covering their faces at the harsh flash of light.

“We must flee, to perform the rite anew,” Barfour cried.

Gunn staked first one and then another vampire as they struggled to their feet. The third got up in time to throw a blind punch at Xander, and then howled as he realized he had rushed onto Xander’s stake.

“Behind you,” Gunn yelled as the fourth tackled Xander. He charged across the room, plunging his stake into Xander’s attacker.

“Stupid blind side,” Xander coughed out as the dust settled around him. He grabbed Gunn’s offered hand and scrambled up, automatically reaching out to dust off his eye patch.

“You okay?” Gunn asked.

“You will pay for your misdeeds,” the leader shouted as he pounded up the stairs.

“Like you’re going to get far going _up_ ,” Xander called after him as they rushed to follow.

“Fools! I shall turn into a winged being and fly away, creature of the night that I am,” Barfour shrieked.

“How come you’re all talk and no flying, then?” Gunn asked as he reached the top. They were in an open loft area, and the vampire had already backed over to the large window facing the front of the house.

Barfour hesitated, but when he opened his mouth to reply, Xander interrupted him.

“Only one vamp I know can turn into a bat, and you, my undead cult leader, are no Dark Master.”

“Now, to me that rivals Barfour here for messed up,” Gunn told Xander. “Can’t you call the dude Dracula after all this time?”

“Old thralls die hard,” Xander explained.

“Nah, I’m thinking you didn’t give me all the details,” Gunn commented with a raised eyebrow. “Before when you told it, it was like you were Drac’s servant for a day; now it’s all thrall this, and Dark Master that.”

Xander threw his hands in the air. “For the last time, no matter what anyone says, nothing sexy happened with me and the Unholy Prince.”

“And yet you’re all about the pet names for him,” Gunn returned.

“Quit bugging me about it,” Xander said crossly. “I should never have brought him up.”

“Yes, stop your jealous bickers and love squabbles, and pay attention to my immanent and thrilling escape,” Barfour said in a sullen voice.

They both turned from each other to stare at him. The vampire preened a little under the attention, and then obviously remembered he was supposed to be threatening his otherworldly exit, and grabbed the window latch with a menacing shake.

“Jealous what?” Xander blurted.

“Love who?” Gunn asked incredulously at the same time.

The vampire waved his hand at them impatiently. “A world ending ceremony of this magnitude, and the two of you banter like a poorly written screwball comedy.”

“We so don’t,” Xander protested.

“You, following him about and trying to impress him with your facile wit,” their adversary spat at Xander.

“Can’t help it if I’m the kind of guy people try to impress,” Gunn said.

“And you, saving him not just as a deed of bravery, but as if he were someone precious to you,” the vampire told Gunn.

“Give me a break. We work together,” Gunn said.

“And live together,” Xander added. “Except not _that_ way.”

“We’re friends, that’s all,” Gunn said, his gaze flickering to Xander and then away.

“Can’t two guys share an apartment and spend all their time together without people jumping to conclusions?” Xander griped to the room in general.

“Sure, I mean, just because I could have gone back to L.A. to set camp up there months ago,” Gunn said dismissively.

“And Willow kept telling me she could put you up at some hotel, but I said I liked having you around,” Xander scoffed.

They each caught the other eyeing them, and then both looked away.

“Hey,” Xander said suddenly. The vampire was very quietly edging past them and about to sneak down the stairs.

Gunn started, and then staked the vampire.

“Well, that’s that,” Xander said after a pause.

“Yup,” Gunn agreed. “No more thinking about what happened here tonight.”

“Hey, I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Xander told him.

“That makes two of us,” Gunn said.

They walked down the stairs slowly, silently.

Fifteen minutes later, Gunn pulled up to the apartment complex and shut his truck off.

“That Barfour, what a huge jerk, huh?” Xander asked.

“You said it,” Gunn agreed. “Acting like he knew anything about us.”

“Right! Because he was totally wrong,” Xander said.

“Couldn’t have been more off,” Gunn replied.

They took the elevator up, and parted ways as soon as they got inside the apartment.

When Xander finished brushing his teeth, Gunn was sitting on the couch in his boxers and t-shirt with the television on.

“Want to watch Conan out here?” Gunn asked.

“If you -- I thought -- I could just watch it in the bedroom,” Xander said, jerking his thumb back in that direction.

“Nah, it’s cool.”

Xander sat down, and they watched the monologue together without speaking.

“I think it’s a repeat,” Xander said as the show went to commercial.

Gunn said nothing for a moment, and then pulled Xander over to him and kissed him.

At the sound of the Max Weinberg 7 re-playing the theme music, they both pulled away, panting.

“Just so we’re clear,” Gunn said slowly. “This has nothing to do with that crazy cult vampire.”

“Right! It’s completely our idea,” Xander pronounced.

“I hear that,” Gunn said, leaning in to kiss him again.

“So. You want to finish watching Conan in the bedroom?” Xander asked when they drew apart.

“Hell, yes,” Gunn said, and they raced each other there.


End file.
